Ferrari Reveals the Recent Updates Played a Crucial Role in Charles Leclerc’s P5 in Imola

Ferrari have been making a considerable amount of progress over the last few months by bringing in updates to their car for almost every race weekend. Recently, during the latter part of the race in Imola, Charles Leclerc had the pace to defend himself from Sergio Perez, who was on fresh soft tires.

Iñaki Rueda, Ferrari’s head of race strategy, later revealed that their recent upgrades had played a partial contribution to Leclerc’s successful defense in the race.

“We had much more faith in the performance of the hard tyres this time. Even as the light of how the Mediums had been behaving,” Rueda said.

“Then I have to say that some of the improvements that we have introduced on the SF1000 also helped us out. Not forgetting the good job done by Charles and the team to prepare the tires for the restart,” he added.

How the safety-car played right into the Ferrari’s hands?

A top-five never looked like a possibility for the Maranello-outfit through most parts of the race. Out of nowhere, Max Verstappen’s retirement played entirely in the favor of the team as they pulled off a decent strategy to bring Leclerc home in P5.

Racing Point’s Sergio Perez tried his best to jump ahead of the Ferrari. However, he never managed to do so, as he settled for P6. Not only did Leclerc defend successfully against Perez but also from quite a lot of cars who were flying with the Soft tires.

Though he lost a place to Daniil Kvyat, the others on similar tires never had the chance to get past the Monegasque. Considering how the race looked like during most parts, Ferrari would not have stressed too much about losing the P4.

Could Ferrari secure P3 by the end of this season?

The recent updates Ferrari introduced to their cars proved to be extremely effective. Now with the updates, the Prancing Horses are slowly creeping their way back up to where they belong. The desire to finish in P3 might feel like it is a bit too late for Ferrari, but who knows?

Fans know Formula 1 for portraying some unpredictable races, and all Ferrari needs to do is to avoid being on the receiving end. Instead, they need to use the unpredictability to their advantage and carry their team to P3 by the end of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Apart from that, Ferrari are looking to bring further updates to their cars. This could play a vital role in taking their fight to the trio of Renault, Mclaren, and Racing Point. The only question is, will Ferrari manage to make it a four-way fight for P3 on the constructors’ table?